Chen, Y; McCabe, B and Hyatt, D (2017) Relationship between individual resilience, interpersonal conflicts at work, and safety outcomes of construction workers. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 143(8): 04017042, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Interpersonal conflicts at work (ICW) have been widely regarded as a job stressor; however, it is rarely linked to physical safety outcomes. The ICW primarily has two forms on a construction site: conflicts with supervisors (ICWS) and conflicts with coworkers (ICWC). This study examined the occurrences of ICWS and ICWC on construction sites, and investigated the relationship among ICWS, ICWS, and physical safety outcomes together with job stress. In addition, possible antecedents of ICWS and ICWC including workhours, mobility, and individual resilience were also examined. The research was based on 837 surveys collected from more than 100 construction sites in Ontario, Canada between July 2015 and July 2016. Structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques were used to test the hypothesized relationships. This paper leads to the following conclusions. Although ICW was reported as quite often or very often by only 6.3% of respondents, it had a significant effect on both physical safety outcomes, including physical injuries and unsafe events, and job stress. Individual resilience (IR) had a significant negative correlation with both ICWS and ICWC, which in turn could decrease the frequency of physical safety outcomes and job stress. The contributions of this study are that safety professionals may consider adding coping skill training safety programs to improve the individual resilience of their workforce and reduce conflict-related safety outcomes. This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license,.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | individual resilience; interpersonal conflict; job stress; labor and personnel issues; safety performance |
| Index terms: | survey, structural equation modelling, construction site, injury, personnel, safety performance, commons, safety programs, Canada, mobility, supervisor, construction worker, coping, job stress |
| Subjects: | property law, work location, practitioner, data collection methods, statistical analysis, behavioral psychology, infrastructure and transport systems, health conditions and diseases, occupational health and safety management, Geography, management |
| Topics: | Roles and Professions, Geographical Context, Research Practice, Health and Safety, Site Management, Human Resources, Legal Issues, Urban Studies |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here